Printing to Hp500ps on a Mac

[Ted Taylor]

HP has posted a printer driver for OS10.3 on their site that is supposed to work with the 500ps. The Postscript RIP is supposed to follow in September. I have downloaded and installed the printer driver, but I can not get it to work properly. Preview shows everything to be OK, but printing from the original Plotmaker view or from the Preview window does not work. Only part of drawing being printed on strange size paper and the part being printed differs depending on which view it was printed from.

I would appreciate any one else's experience with this. There has not been much of all on the hp 500 forum as of yet.

[JCovarrubias]

how well does your HP DJ 500PS print from other applications like MS Excel w/the new driver? e.g. print a large spreadsheet

j.

[Ted Taylor]

JCovarrubias wrote:
how well does your HP DJ 500PS print from other applications like MS Excel w/the new driver? e.g. print a large spreadsheet

j.

I just tried printing a D size (24"x36") work sheet out of Excel on a 36" roll. The preview shows the worksheet oriented properly but when it prints it is turned 90 degrees with the resulting sheet being 36"x 36" with the worksheet to one side.

As I recall, I had similar issues with Gimp Print about orientation of drawing. I have been serving on a Jury for the past week and it appears that it will continue for several more days. When I dig out from that, I'll dig a little more on this end. Mean while if any one has sucess with it, let me know.

Thank you,

[Fabrizio Diodati]

Ted,

from what I know (HP Italy told me this!) you should also update the plotter firmware (otherwise it doesn't work properly) but the firmware update isn't so simple, you should ask to HP Tech Support.

Friendly
Fabrizio

[Ted Taylor]

Thanks everyone. I have now updated firmware (Must be done in OS9, even though the last version of the firmware is only a month or so old.enough to make a grumpy old man even grumpier)

I also found out the following on their user forum...

ˆby Ted Taylor on Wednesday, 23 June 2004

Bronco Blue wrote:
"There is no rotate feature in the driver, thus images will print short edge first."

Does this mean that if I have a 36" roll of paper loaded in my 500ps and I want to print a 24"x36" (Arch D) drawing, it will always give me a 36"x36" cut sheet that will require manual trimming?

by Bronco Blue on Thursday, 24 June 2004 (Bronco Blue is one of the site moderators)

"Yes, you are correct."ˆ

This was one of the issues that I had, so it appears to be organic and will probably be corrected about the time laser 3d holograms of our structures will be possible and affordable.

[Anonymous]

Ted wrote:
Does this mean that if I have a 36" roll of paper loaded in my 500ps and I want to print a 24"x36" (Arch D) drawing, it will always give me a 36"x36" cut sheet that will require manual trimming?

I have this same problem printing to a DesignJet 1050c. Plotting works fine except that I can only plot one copy at a time. For multiple sets we have to keep sending additional plot jobs as many times as the number of sets we want. At least they are collated.

There seem to be chronic and endemic problems with HP plotters in OSX (our HP service tech told us that the OSX 1050c driver was no good and unlikely to improve). I've been looking at Oce and Epson for replacements. Oce has some issues with OSX too, but I know how to get around them, and from all I hear the Epson 9600 works beautifully (now, if I can just find a local dealer...).

[aahatimo]

here is a link to the newly released osx driver. there are other new drivers posted also.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?locale=en_US&lang=English+%...
the title makes it sound like it is also a driver for the plain jane non ps 500. has anyone had luck w/ that? can one now print/plot to a 500 w/o all the workarounds? seriously considering a new 17" powerbook...
there is also a users guide: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?locale=en_US&lang=English+%...
it will not download for me.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

For some reason, IE and Safari do not work (Java problem) - use Netscape to download the drivers.

The HP driver works well from our dual 2Ghz G5, 1Gb RAM, OS10.3.4 using the "Print" command to our networked HP800 (not PS), apart from one bug.

If a custom paper size is chosen, say A1 wide edge first, it tries to print onto a strange US size A4/legal paper size. This give a printout of just the corner of the drawing.

The working preset A1 paper size exits the printer narrow edge first, and there is no way I have found to change it. A real **** having to change rolls between A0 and A1!

However, the colour controls/colour matching are much better then Archicad/Plotmaker. If HP can sort out the roll feed options or fix the custom paper size, it will be a winner.

Regards,

Nick Harvey

[Anonymous]

We are looking for a new plotter – as well as a large format printer to print from photoshop
Using OSX 10.3 with Mac G5’s and G4’s

We were about to buy a hp designjet 500 or 500ps only to now find out that we would not be able to print (from photoshop etc. ) is this true?

Has anyone been able to solve printing issue with new hp drivers or other solutions??

Thanks, Ron

[Anonymous]

The HP Designjet 500 need the optional HPGL2 board and a software RIP to give full Mac functionality. The RIPs we have tried are always slower than the native HP "Print" drivers on the HP800.

Have a close look at the Designjet 800. We print to it using Photoshop CS OSX 10.3.5 without a RIP, and without Postscript. We also "print" and "plot" to it from ArchiCAD/Plotmaker version 7 to 9.

The only down side is that there are no Lysonic inks to suit it.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Nick